Graduate gains from garbage

Apr 06, 2003

The road to employment is narrow and jammed by the heavy traffic of job seekers. Getting employed in this country is equivalent to trying to get to heaven.

By Denis Jjuuko

The road to employment is narrow and jammed by the heavy traffic of job seekers. Getting employed in this country is equivalent to trying to get to heaven.

A number of graduates even celebrate getting short-listed for job interviews they will probably never get.

After graduating from Makerere University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Planning, Isaac Katureebe looked for a job for a while in vain.

Getting weary of knocking on potential employers’ doors, he sat down and thought of what he could do. So many ideas lingered in his mind but the problem remained initial capital.

At his brother’s home in Makindye, where he stayed, there was a boy who popped in once in a while to collect garbage. He would walk away with at least sh1000 from this particular home. Katureebe thought of doing the same.

“I thought to myself: ‘if I collected garbage from at least 10 homes, I would walk away with sh10, 000. If I did it twice a week, that money would be doubled,’” he recalls.

So, he started with his own brother’s residence. He could dump the garbage at the Kampala City Council (KCC) skips. He did this for about four months. However, after a while, it became inconvenient.

“These guys (KCC workers) could take too long to remove the garbage and the whole place would become infested with flies,” Katureebe says.

He started thinking up better ways to keep this area clean. “I had become successful and wanted to carry out my work throughout the entire Makindye division,” he reveals.

“The only way I could do this was through the use of lorries.”

That, however, paused another problem: “I didn’t have the money to hire lorries.”

Consequently, Katureebe contacted his former varsity lecturer, Jimmy Zikusooka, who advised him to start up a company and lobby the authorities for an opportunity.

In November 2001, Home Klin Ltd, his company, was registered. However, it took him four months of hardwork and commuting to and from City Hall to get everything moving.

He wrote proposals to the KCC public health department, who in turn introduced him to the division officials at Makindye. Here, his idea was welcomed with open hands as they would eventually save a lot of money and time allocated to garbage collection.

His work was to collect garbage from people’s homes, at a fee. In most of the suburbs, people just pack their waste into sisal sacks and throw at the roadsides.

Such tendencies block sewage systems and the flow of water thereby making these roads impassable. A number of urban dwellers do not have access to these rubbish skips because the walking distance might be too long for them.

“I had to hire a truck to ferry the garbage from the homes,” he says. “The first six months were really terrible. I spent more money than I collected. I wanted to abandon the whole project but my brother, Chris Tumusiime,s advised me accordingly,” he explains.

Katureebe says he started with about 30 homes. “We charge from sh1,000 to sh15,000 per home per month depending on one’s income and the volume of garbage we collect,” he says. “We encourage them to pay in installments if they can’t pay in a lump sum.”

True to his statement, as we walk down a path, an elderly lady calls him and gives him sh1,500.

“This is for the next month. N’ebanjja lyaffe kati liwedeyo,” she tells him, meaning that she had even covered her debt for the last month.

He issues her with a receipt there and then. Afterwards, I turn back to ask her what she thinks about Home Klin Ltd.

“They are doing a good job, that’s why I pay them,” the woman, whose name is Hajjati Namulema of Klezia Zone, says.

In the areas where they operate, Home Klin collects trash twice a week. “I used to rely on a boy to collect my garbage but he would only come when he felt like. The good news is that I know where to find Home Klin. These ones are efficient,” says Sarah, an employee of Assec Consult who is resident in Makindye.

Allen Samura, another resident, says KCC workers at times could refuse them to dump their garbage at the skips. “We didn’t have anywhere to take it. You reach there and you are told: ‘the skip is full, take your kasasiro back.’ These (Home Klin) are efficient,” she explains.

James Akena of the New Vision and a resident there says the same of Katurebe’s services.

“The man is very down-to-earth and humble. He comes to my gate, I open for him and he picks the garbage, which we pack in buveeera. I could not have imagined he was a graduate.”

Katureebe has dug himself a niche in this business. With the money he has made from collecting garbage, he bought two secondhand trucks, an Isuzu Elf and a Jiefang. Now KCC no longer has to go to this area to collect garbage. Besides, he has created jobs for seven people using his two trucks.

“Excuse me sir, I have been collecting garbage from these homes. Now I don’t, can I join you?” a boy asks for employment. He gives him an appointment. The excited boy now looks forward to salaried employment.

Katureebe says he has now got more than 1,000 clients in the four Makindye parishes where he operates. He says he has managed to eliminate the open dump areas, which had become part of Makindye.

However, he observes: “We have a long way to go. Sensitising people isn’t a joke.”

He hopes that one day he will come up with better ways of dealing with garbage. “We dump it at Kiteezi landfill but we are wasting money. There is money in garbage. We can make manure out of it. That’s my dream,” Katureebe explains, adjusting his green overall uniform. He looks so much like the rest of his boys you could not tell the difference between them.

Born in Burambira Kijuguta, Kabale district, Katureebe went through Kigezi High Primary School before joining Kigezi High School for his O levels. He joined St. Stephen SSS, Bweyogere, for his A levels before going on Makerere University in 1998.

The 28-year-old enterprising youth is the seventh in a family of 12 children. His father, Garshom Rukandema, is a retired taxi driver who is currently a farmer.

To the youth out there he says: “People used to laugh at me, saying today’s degrees are rubbish and wondering how a graduate would collect kasasiro, but I advise them to take academics seriously.”

He says once you hatch up an idea, do not just sit with it: “Identify the right people to help you realise your dreams,” he concludes.

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